"Nay," answered Glyndon, embarrassed; "Viola is not of my rank. Her
profession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty, but I cannot
wed her."

Zanoni frowned.

"Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your own
happiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it
appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so
scanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free
Will; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our very
contradictions harmonise with His solemn ends. You have before you
an option. Honourable and generous love may even now work out your
happiness, and effect your escape; a frantic and selfish passion will
but lead you to misery and doom."

"Do you pretend, then, to read the future?"

"I have said all that it pleases me to utter."

"While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni," said Glyndon, with
a smile, "are you yourself so indifferent to youth and beauty as to act
the stoic to its allurements?"

"If it were necessary that practice square with precept," said Zanoni,
with a bitter smile, "our monitors would be but few. The conduct of the
individual can affect but a small circle beyond himself; the permanent
good or evil that he works to others lies rather in the sentiments he
can diffuse. His acts are limited and momentary; his sentiments may
pervade the universe, and inspire generations till the day of doom. All
our virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE
sentiments, not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments of
Julian reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine helped,
under Heaven's will, to bow to Christianity the nations of the earth.
In conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea, who believes in
the miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther; to the
sentiments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for the
noblest revolution it has known. Our opinions, young Englishman, are the
angel part of us; our acts, the earthly."

"You have reflected deeply for an Italian," said Glyndon.

"Who told you that I was an Italian?"

"Are you not? And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as a
native, I--"

"Tush!" interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then, after a
pause, he resumed in a mild voice, "Glyndon, do you renounce Viola
Pisani? Will you take some days